1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a seal plate, rotor disk, and blade assembly for sealing the upstream face of the rotor disk and blade root, and more particularly to the seal plate of such assembly having radially opposed wedging sealing means responsive to centrifugal force to establish a sealed chamber adjacent the blade root.
2. Description of the Prior Art
This invention is closely related to, and comprises an improvement in the seal plate of U.S. Pat. No. 3,572,966 of common assignee. In the referenced patent, the seal plate establishes a chamber generally coextensive with the radial extent of the blade root so that cooling air introduced therein flows axially along the root to cool only the blade root and exit in an aperture in an opposed downstream seal plate.
In the instant invention, it is desirable to cool the blade via a cooling fluid flowing through radial passageways initiating in the blade root and terminating in the blade tip. In order to minimize the leakage of the cooling fluid from the chamber previously defined by the sealing plate, which chamber generally enclosed the entire blade root to pass the cooling fluid thereby, a smaller or radially shorter chamber is now desirable, being only sufficiently extensive to inclose that area of the root containing the inlets to the blade cooling passageways. In this regard, the inlets to the passageways are in the radially innermost area or cusp of the root and that space between the cusp and the adjacent disk area defines a chamber into which the passageways open. Thus, it is necessary for the outermost seal of the seal plate to be effective at a position radially outwardly of this area between the blade root and the disk, however, the closer such seal can be made to this area the less opportunity there is for a leak to exist.